Background Threads
by Twins of Chaos and Sugar
Summary: A collection of sidestories to Convergence. First and third person. Includes humor, bad jokes, bad endings, general lameness, explanations of references in Convergence, and everything else. This will have no set update schedule or attempts at one.


For those of you who stumbled on this unintentionally, I'd recommend reading Convergence first; this will make twice as much sense if you know all the characters, circumstances and references. If you don't mind missing out, go ahead and read. Either way, enjoy.

Fhira: Well, we were originally going to have Neko write this, but after a few weeks of the nightmare she calls a schedule never letting up, we took over. And it took WAY longer than we ever thought, so sorry for the delay. So anyway this is written by me, edited by Sayuka, and dedicated to ActionFry for reviewing every chapter so far. Thankies to you, and enjoy to all!

3-28: Fhira: Okay, edited. Scenes are now separated and a few typos have been fixed. If you see anything else that needs edited, feel free to tell us....

* * *

Trio vs. Duo

Summary: There are two well-known teams within Wammy's house, the Trio and the Duo. It would be so much easier if there was just the Five, but for some reason, they just can't get along. It just might have something to do with the constant battles for superiority.

Look For: The origin of the police site's program, Tori as mischievious, and why Mello believes in teamwork and likes explosions.

Warning: Occasional swearing... that's about it.

* * *

Mello was a very proud person.

Now, no one would expect him to be proud, of course. He was second to Near, which was humiliation enough for anyone. And he'd go to any length to get chocolate, or whatever else he wanted, no matter how humiliating (or illegal) it might be. Of course, what that meant was that Mello didn't seem to have any pride (or sense of shame), and he was quite content with that.

There was really only one thing he was proud of: being the best. Near didn't count; just because the albino brat got better test scores than Mello didn't mean he was better. Near might be smarter (and Mello would argue that, anyway), but that didn't mean he was better. Mello could solve more cases than him, just because he could get people to talk to him and help him, whether they knew it or not. Near couldn't ever really interact with people, no matter what Victory tried to teach him, so he'd have to rely on what he could find out from a computer. And Near wasn't that good with computers. Matt was far better, and so was Nano. For that matter, just about everyone in Wammy's House was better with computers than Near, even Victory, and Mello regularly found Victory by listening for the frustrated swearing directed at which ever piece of modern technology was refusing to cooperate this time. She swore that Murphy had reincarnated as all technology invented past 1800. And she was _still_ better than Near.

So Mello was the best, and quite proud of it. He was also easy to anger with any implication that he wasn't.

"What do you _mean_, you could beat us?" Mello hissed.

Thought gave him a bland look. "You and Matt. You can't win against the Trio. Sure, individually you get better scores, but come on--Matt _learned_ from Nano."

"And then got better than him!"

"And you don't have anyone like me or Fly on your team, and you're too emotional to be worth anything in a real contest," Thought continued.

"The fuck are y--!" A ball of paper hit the back of Mello's head, cutting him off. He spun to glare at the other side of the library where Victory was sitting to read. "What's your problem?!"

"If you must swear, at least keep quiet about it." Victory didn't even look up from the book she'd buried her nose in.

"_Why_?"

"So that I can claim plausible deniability." The closest she came to looking up was turning the page.

Mello growled under his breath before turning back to Thought. "Fine. The fuck are you talking about?"

She was smirking. "You've just proven me right, you know."

Mello snarled. "Just because I'm emotional doesn't make me useless! Matt and I can beat your Trio any day!"

"You couldn't even come close."

"You keep thinking that, and maybe you'll believe it!"

"Quit arguing like children and have a contest to decide," Victory called from across the room.

Thought frowned at her. "Why should we? The answer is obvious."

"Of course it is. What, don't you want to be humiliated by us? Matt and I are the best you know, losing to us isn't that bad," Mello said as if comforting her. He didn't even try to pretend to mean it.

Thought glared at him. "Fine then. You remember that new serial murderer in London?"

Mello sneered as he nodded.

"We'll see who can catch them first."

"That won't even be a _challenge_." Mello smirked.

"You wish," Thought said. She turned away. "Well if you'll excuse me, I have another two to find. We can hardly leave such an important case in such inept hands, after all."

"No, we can't. Fortunately I know exactly where Matt is, so you don't have to worry."

Thought shot him a final glare before leaving.

Mello paused as he heard Victory's phone ringing. She was holding it by her ear with a patient, amused expression as she continued reading. Eventually someone must have answered.

"Hello, Roger? No, not serious. Could you call L and tell him to leave the London muderer alone? Yeah. What other one? That he'd be interested in. The Trio and Duo are racing to solve it. Okay, thanks. I think it'll be quite amusing." She hung up and raised an eyebrow at Mello. "What? Worried about taking a case L was after?"

Mello scoffed. "Of course not. It'll be easy."

* * *

"Aaargh!"

Matt sent a glare at Mello as he collapsed onto Matt's bed. It would have been more intimidating if Matt had slept in the last three days. "If you won't let me sleep, can you at least leave me in peace to work on your ridiculous ideas? Or, you know, do something productive?"

"You'd fall asleep on your computer if I left you alone," Mello said.

"And whose fault is that?"

"Yours. You're the one who's taking three days to hack _one_ police station. And I've been helping you, anyway." Mello had, since leaving the library three days previous, not allowed Matt to so much as leave the chair in front of his computer. Matt had already printed out all the newspaper articles and transcripts of news reports, but for some reason, he couldn't access any of the police stations. Mello was being as helpful as he could, mainly bringing Matt food and water and reading through all of the reports to figure out what they needed to find. Unfortunately, that included information that only the police station would have.

"You're the one who decided to do this in the first place." Matt, for his part, had absolutely zero interest in the contest. He was much more intent on sleeping, and finding out how much catching up he'd have to do for the classes Mello had made him skip.

"We can't just let that Trio think that they're better than us!"

"Why not?" Matt asked.

After a few minutes of silence he turned around and twitched. A ball of foil, wrapper and napkin hit Mello in the face, waking him up with a start. "If I'm not sleeping, no way in hell you are."

"Why not?" Mello grumbled. "I'm tired and I'm not doing anything." He stretched. "Everyone's got the same bed, I can fall asleep here as easily as in my room."

"Next time you fall asleep, I'm kicking you out and going to bed myself." Matt knew he wouldn't actually carry out the threat, but Mello probably wouldn't risk it.

Sure enough, Mello sat up, grumbling through the entire process, and slid down to sit on the floor next to Matt's bed. After a moment of watching Matt continue to work he couldn't stay still any more. "Why can't you get in?"

Matt groaned. Mello could never just shut up and let him work. "How should I know? Last week I could get in. Now I can't. That's all I know."

"Is Nano blocking you?"

"No, it's the site. Unless he's working for them and installed a new security wall for them, it's not Nano. And I could get past Nano, anyway."

"Is anyone better than you?"

Matt almost growled. "Isn't that rather obvious?"

"Well who is it?"

"I don't know!" Matt had stopped trying, and just glared at the login screen while typing random passwords into it and trying them. Mello would probably notice after a while that he wasn't doing anything, but in the meantime he could think what else to try, and who knew, maybe one of them would work.

There were a few more minutes of silence. "...Well what should we do then? Break into the station itself?"

Matt nearly fell out of his chair. "What took you that long to ask? And yes."

Mello jumped up. "All right then, let's go."

Matt glared.

Mello deflated. "Fine." He looked at the clock. "It's three AM?"

"Yes, it is." And Matt was not happy about it.

"Then we'll go as soon as it gets dark. I'll meet you at the door at eight." Mello waved over his shoulder as he walked out of Matt's room.

Matt stared at the door, his mind slightly registering just how rude Mello was being. He then turned, stared at the computer, and let himself collapse. His head landed on the keyboard as he fell asleep.

The computer beeped and the words Login Successful flashed onto the screen.

* * *

"Matt you are amazing!"

The newly named Matt-the-Amazing woke up at the shout, and promptly fell off of his chair onto the floor. He blinked at Mello for a moment, not comprehending. "...Huh?"

Mello was too busy crowing with joy to notice. "You got in! What did you do? Shit, if I'd known you got in, I wouldn't've gotten ready to leave! When did you get in?"

Matt continued staring from the floor as Mello dropped into the chair he'd fallen out of. "Huh?" He looked at the clock. 7:43. Over sixteen hours, and he still hadn't recovered his energy.

He had, however, recovered enough to need the bathroom, and bolted for it as soon as he realized, leaving an oblivious-yet-ecstatic Mello to look through the police website.

On his way back, Matt encountered a mirror.

Well, not quite a mirror. Actually, not a mirror at all. But Nano had the same baggy eyes, messy hair, pale face and generally sleepless expression that Matt had, so he counted for a mirror as far as Matt was concerned. The two stopped and stared at each other in silence for several minutes before they finally (and simultaneously) managed to make their brains function and asked the obvious question.

"Why are we doing this, again?"

* * *

"We have called a meeting on behalf of the Taken-Advantage-Of-Computer-Experts-United," Matt and Nano announced in unison, mostly in order to demonstrate their unitedness, and not at all because they just happened to and found it creepy. Not at all. "Also known as TAOCEU."

Thought, Fly, and Mello sat around the rest of the table, looking uniformly bewildered, disbelieving, and about to deny their knowledge of the identities of the lunatics in front of them, whom they did not know and definitely weren't friends with.

"We wish to question the necessity of the currently ongoing competition between the parties, known as Trio and Duo respectively, currently gathered here," Nano recited, looking and sounding rather like a remarkably comical zombie.

"We are basing our objection on the abuse that we, each group's computer expert, has been forced to suffer in the recent days." Matt was slightly more awake, but looked just as tired and zombified as Nano. "It has been proven many times that human beings, particularly at our age, require a certain amount of sleep, generally around eight hours, to function and grow properly. That _includes_ our brains."

Mello raised a hand. "But neither of you want to be L anyway, so--"

Mello was met with a pair of death glares from equally tired computer zombies.

Mello's hand fell. "Nevermind."

Thought and Fly exchanged disbelieving looks. "Since when is Mello scared of his pet?" Thought asked.

The glares turned on Thought.

Thought tried to look small. "Nevermind."

Mello snorted. "Hey Thought, what was that?"

The glares turned on Mello.

Mello went silent.

"I don't know Mello, maybe you're the pet...."

You'd think a room full of geniuses would have gotten it by now....

The glares turned, again, to Thought.

"...Nevermind."

* * *

"Insulting commentary aside," Matt said, not at all mildly, "are we ready to proceed with the meeting?"

"After half an hour of arguing?" Nano wasn't speaking mildly or not mildly. He just sounded less than half aware of his surroundings, and more than a little high. Matt was fairly certain that it was from lack of sleep.

Then again, it was Wammy's, so who knew.

They didn't get any answer from their three supposed teammates, but said teammates had been glared into--temporary--submission enough that they nodded.

Matt looked at Nano, who was visibly tipping over. Of course, the room seemed to be tipping over, too. "Shall we dispense with the formalities?"

"Yes." Nano didn't wait for the rest to agree--though they didn't seem about to speak, anyway. "The point is, we don't want to keep going with this contest."

"It's pointless, it wasn't agreed on by all of us or even a majority, and it's already become a problem," Matt said. "So we don't want to do it."

There was a moment of silence before Mello shrugged. "Well I can do the rest of it on my own, anyway."

"What, still planning to break into the police station?" Thought asked.

Mello shrugged. "Maybe."

"Of course you are. You can't exactly think of anything else to do," Thought said.

"Then what're you going to do? And I don't need to break in anyway," Mello said smugly.

Thought scoffed. "Oh, right. You expect me to believe that you got into the site before Tori's program went up?"

"Of course not; Matt got through after. And once you're in, you can find the password easily."

Thought stared. "...You got in?"

Mello smirked. "You mean you didn't?"

"I...." Thought trailed off, looking stricken. She was saved from answering.

Matt's and Nano's sleep-deprived brains stopped passively watching the argument and realized something at the same time.

"_TORI designed that program?!_"

* * *

"TORI!"

Tori looked up as her door crashed open to reveal two very angry, very tired tech zombies glaring at her.

"...Well, hello. There something you need?"

Tori was fairly certain that they'd both just exploded.

"You made that! That program that blocks us! Why? You knew we were working on this! Why would you make anything like that!"

Tori blinked at them. "Made... program.... Nano, Matt, think about this. What do you know about my programming abilities?"

The two froze and blinked for an instant. "...They suck."

Tori twitched. "Not the term I'd use, but relative to you two, yes, fine, they suck. So...?"

"...So Thought lied."

"About what?"

"She said you made the program."

"Oh. No, I didn't," Tori said calmly. "I just asked Ryan to, with some of his friends. And got the police to install it. It's a layered password. You need three passwords, in order, to get in, but the screen for the second and third passwords looks identical to the screen you get when you put the first password in wrong." She shrugged. "I came up with the idea, but Ryan and his friends did the actual programming."

There was another explosion.

_Huh_, Tori thought later, dragging two now-unconscious tech zombies back to their rooms. _If Matt blows up whenever and he's Mello's teammate... maybe that's why he likes explosions so much._

* * *

"...If I knew mentioning Tori would get us out of that meeting, I'd've done it sooner," Thought said as she, Fly and Mello watched Matt and Nano storm down the hallway.

"It was the program, not Tori," Mello said. "But otherwise I agree with you... for once."

"We need to define winning," Fly said suddenly. Thought and Mello both jumped; she hadn't spoken since the meeting began.

"What for?" Mello demanded.

Fly shrugged. "If we only claim winning by figuring out the answer, it is a very vague definition, and one we can't prove concretely. We should define victory as figuring out the criminals and the motive, and delivered the information to the police."

Mello snorted. "Sure, whatever. Seriously though, are you really so stupid that you think there's more than one killer? I didn't expect this to be hard, but that's really pathetic."

Thought's face was blank, but Fly smiled. "The police site isn't the only way to get information, Mello."

* * *

Mello hated flies. They were annoying and buzzed and distracted you. But even more than that, he hated Flys.

Matt had caught Fly spying on one of their discussions when they were reviewing the case, and when they'd almost finished it, too. Mello didn't know how Matt had noticed, something about internet and interference and the cell phone she was carrying. And she'd just been standing quietly outside the door to Matt's room (their unofficial investigation headquarters, much to Matt's displeasure) as if waiting for someone. She could have been there for hours and, probably, had.

As if that wasn't enough, Mello had also learned that she'd lied about the number of killers. There was only one, and she'd known it; she'd deliberately pretended there were more to mislead him. What was worse, it had worked for a while; Mello should have known what was going on when Though had stayed blank instead of gloating. And, with those delays, they had found the answer at almost the same time, to the minute, that the Trio had.

So now, Mello was in London, having snuck out at night, towing a grumbling Matt as he sprinted toward the police station.

His only consolation was having seen Thought towing Nano and Fly in much the same way.

They reached the doors of the station within seconds from opposite directions, and ended up tumbling through the doors together, resulting in a mixed-up pile of five Wammy's children suddenly occupying the space just inside the police stations door.

"Get the hell off me!"

"Excuse me?"

"You get off, dammit! I can't breath!"

"What is going on here?" The first police officer to recover sounded half surprised and half scandalized.

Mello took a moment to extract himself from the pile, grab Matt's arm, and yank him out. He stood and faced the police officer with dignity and Matt at his side... or perhaps just dignity... as the Trio attempted to finish detangling themselves. "We've solved the serial killer case and we came to tell you. They," he pointed at the now-standing Trio, "were trying to solve it also, and they heard us discussing the solution, so they're trying to get the credit for it."

There was a moment of silence. Then the officer blinked. "Oh, you're those kids. Sorry, you're a bit late."

Trio and Duo united momentarily in a stunned blink and moment of utter bewilderment.

It was cut down to just a moment as Tori came out of a back room, almost grinning. "You five are supposed to be in bed."

"What are you doing here?" Mello demanded.

"Oh, I figured I'd teach you something.... First, while groups are more effective than one person, they're limited as are the members who are in it are limited, particularly in geography. Second, if you focus on getting something done, rather than beating someone, you're much more likely to get it done faster."

"So.... What?"

"I have a team too. They are not limited to one building. Thus, while none of them have IQs over one forty, and generally much lower, we still solved it first."

"And he's been arrested," another officer put in.

The five stared in shock.

"...So we did all that for nothing?"

"Yeah, basically."

Matt and Nano looked at each other. "Tori, I think I'm going to have to kill you."

"Well, good luck with that. Oh, and there's one more that's important at the moment."

"What?" Mello almost sounded eager for some kind of redeeming value to the entire thing.

"Caught out past curfew. You're all going to be grounded."


End file.
